Are the actions of Wikileaks digital terrorism, free speech, or both?

if digital terrorism means causing terror via digital means… it wouldn’t be that. not for any sane person, that is. there are only a few things in the documents that are of any importance, and we would do well to at least note them.

the rest is general conversation and childish gossip, to my understanding. leaders that speak out against it are embarrassed by what it says, and are probably calling it a security risk because its contents may harm their reputation, not the country.

anyway two other issues do persist in consideration of this topic: in the US we can say all but a few phrases without consequence, so anyone whom speaks out against it isn’t supporting that right, and secondly, wikileaks isn’t based in the US.

here is the description from wikileaks, if it helps:

Wikileaks began on Sunday November 28th publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into US Government foreign activities.

The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February this year, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified Secret.

The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice.

The cables show the extent of US spying on its allies and the UN; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in “client states”; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries; lobbying for US corporations; and the measures US diplomats take to advance those who have access to them.

This document release reveals the contradictions between the US’s public persona and what it says behind closed doors – and shows that if citizens in a democracy want their governments to reflect their wishes, they should ask to see what’s going on behind the scenes.

Every American schoolchild is taught that George Washington – the country’s first President – could not tell a lie. If the administrations of his successors lived up to the same principle, today’s document flood would be a mere embarrassment. Instead, the US Government has been warning governments—even the most corrupt—around the world about the coming leaks and is bracing itself for the exposures.”

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/terrorism

This must be the most pointless international debate ever.
Or at least a decent candidate.

Free, open and transparent government should be the goal that Americans strive for. As always we allow the government to ‘kill the messenger”. The only time change happens is when someone gets sick enough to risk everything and expose wrongs.

Hypocrisy lives and these cable are only happy to reinforce the exclusivity of the people allowed to participate in follies of the rich. While the people beg for the crumbs left behind to feed themselves.

I don’t think the documents reflect very well on the US, but I accept the government’s right to classify certain documents.

Those documents should not be leaked.

Free speech. However uncomfortable or damaging to the political situation it might be.

Neither! I think it was malicious intent motivated by greed!

It’s but one of many countless tests upon our global information philosophies.

Stay tuned… more to come.

What @lucid said.

And probably a bit of what @Cruiser said too.

Greed?

@AdamF Web hits or visits to WikiLeaks == $$$money, Money….MONEY$$$ and lots of it!

A certain amount of secracy is necessary to the proper functioning of government. Would you want every governmental official guarding every comment they make to everyone they talk to in the expectation the comments would appear in public media?

I don’t think Wickileaks qualifies as “terrorism,” but I do think it carries the principle of free speech further than it was intended.

I don’t think it’s either. I think it’s basically a form of sabotage (Assange has explicitly said this is his goal), which doesn’t really strike me as the same ballpark as terrorism, but doesn’t strike me as protected speech either.

Also, my biggest problem with Wikileaks—and also the biggest problem raised by Amnesty International and human rights organizations—isn’t taht it endangers Americans, it’s that it potentially endangers named informants/collaborators in the leaked documents who might be the targets of Taliban assassins or other groups.

I think Wikileaks could—does—have a useful purpose to serve. Its revelations about the Iraq War—that IRaqi prisons were rife with torture and abuse, and that the official count of civilian deaths was low—were important. However, I didn’t see what the point was for any of the Afghan logs, and I’m failing to see the point for the diplomatic leaks, either (which millions of people already had access to). I don’t think transparency for its own sake makes sense, and it’s relatively clear that Assange intends Wikileaks as some sort of anarchist sabotage of power structures rather than a means to hold those power structures accountable.

The international reaction to the Wikileaks document dump is the international terrorism. Framing Julian Assange in Sweden and the cyber attacks on the website plus the assaults on their web host is the real terrorism. This is all a result of the diplomatic corps being just a group of whining little girls. The make the demeaning remarks and expect to be protected by secrecy, screw them. I say fire them all and get some poly-sci majors out of the universities and tell them to represent their country with honor and integrity. This is just another place like congress and the supreme court where we need to clear the decks and start over again.

The U.S. government, like the Soviet Union is collapsing because its own internal rot.

Actually this kind of hysterical rhetoric diminishes acts of terrorism, terrorism is horrific and it isn’t reasonable to associate wiki leaks with such activity, this is more about transparency and honesty than scattering body parts all over the street. Obama has dealt with it quietly and thoughtfully, Ron Paul was measured, everybody else are squawking like chickens. Kill them, kill them all, how dare they expose our hypocrisy. Besides people that choose espionage for a living choose a to play a deadly and treacherous game, that doesn’t seem to me wholly true that they are innocent. Having said that i think they should be forewarned if they are at risk of exposure.

@Ron_C, which diplomats mentioned in the leaks did you specifically have in mind?

I wouldn’t characterize the cables as “smears.” Most of the ones I read were honest assessments. “The Afghan government is exceedingly corrupt.” “Putin is an autocrat.” That is not a smear, and the person who wrote it wasn’t being a whiny little girl. The person who wrote it, on the other hand, probably didn’t expect his honest assessment on this delicate issue to be trumpeted across the Internet.

What do you mean by “Ron Paul was measured” @mammal?

I want him as King. Does he have some splainin’ to do too?

Sabotage not terrorism, and motivated by greed and lust for fame.

@Ron_C “a group of whining little girls”
That got an eyebrow raise out of me.
What do you mean by that? Girls are more whiny than boys? Not in my experience, and I have worked at an elementary school. Whiny is not gender specific.

I am inclined to agree with John Pilger in that they (wikileaks) represent ”..a new and fearless form of investigative journalism..”. The actions that wikileaks took (as described in the fifth paragraph of the linked article) could hardly be ascribed to those of any kind of terrorist organisation.

@Qingu now that you mention it, I haven’t any diplomat complain, just their leaders and the military. I have always made a point of stating my criticisms to a person’s face, never behind their back. It seems, to me that modern diplomacy involves praising a person to his face and criticizing them behind their back. The idea of making a career of such practices is abhorrent to me and I have little respect for those that choose that path. However the idea that we have yet to hear condemnation toward Wikileaks by the actual diplomats does them credit. Frankly, I’m surprised.

And to @wilma, it is just a phrase, all of my children were girls, some whined, some didn’t. I have little experience with little boys except for one grandson. He would complain and cry but did very little whining. I will accept your criticism on this point and no consider the phrase to be “whining little children”. Unfortunately, I am past the editing time limit.

My wife would have said, “Whiny lil titty-babies!” LMAO!

@Ron_C, I disagree with your view of the role of diplomats. I see diplomats as much more similar to journalists—they should be honest and objective in their assessments, but that doesn’t mean their relationships with their sources should be transparent and open to the viewing public. Especially when those sources are (1) putting themselves at risk, or (2) unbalanced autocrats not used to hearing criticism.

Also, in lots of cases it’s not the diplomat “talking behind someone’s back,” it’s the diplomat reporting about a source talking about someone behind their back.

I think it’s just someone who likes the government to be held accountable.

@Cruiser No more malicious or greedy than the US government.

@CaptainHarley Would you agree with me if I said it was “in poor taste”?

@wilma I would’ve saved myself the syllables and just said “whiney bitch”, but I think that that is even less PC… though more in character for me :P

After seeing the movie of Valery Plane (“Fair Game”), which I think should be required viewing for every citizen of this country, the issue of what is going on behind the scenes, who is doing and saying what, and for what reasons, all seems worth knowing, so that the population keeps a check on a government that may have its own mission that has nothing to do with reality. If we don’t know what is being said, we can’t be sure that what is happening or what is being done in our name is in our best interest. Given this point of view, the leaks would be the height of patriotism.

@Qingu Nah, it’s pretty much how @Ron_C says. Take it or leave it that fucking retard we have as a prime minister is the most sincere diplomat you’ll ever get to see, which is why he sucks at it. He thinks someone is a nazi, he tells it to his face (and causes an international accident), he thinks the Finnish prime minister is hot, he tells it to the press (and causes an international accident).

He’s the worst politician in our country, he’s probably knee deep in mafia and masonry shit, he’s senile and can’t tell a good idea from a stick up his ass but he’s sincere, I’ll give him that.

Meanwhile you have all of the Arab emirates saying Ahmadinejad is a nutter and still treating him with respect to his face, the Clinton administration saying that Berlusconi was “inefficient and narcissistic” (ya think?) and that he “sounds like Putin’s emissary” and still treating him all ceremoniously to his face and so on.

A sincere diplomat is a bad diplomat.

@Thammuz Is that why Bush-43 was so bad; too sincere for his own good?

@jerv No, in that case it’s too dumb for his own good. Berlusconi is not stupid. He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He acts like a retard because he knows he can get away with it and that this people of morons will vote him in again the “funnier” he gets, with “funny” being that particular kind of funny that only the average Italian and the average three years old actually find funny. (for those of you wondering, THAT is the leading Italian “comedy” franchise and it makes at least top three every Christmas with every new movie being IDENTICAL to the next.)

Bush on the other hand is visibly genuinely dumb and was put in command to grant his father two more mandates.

@Qingu I will grant that our diplomats deal with a good deal of foreign nutters but I also believe that the more secrets controlled by the government the more corrupt it gets. Look at what Regan and Nixon did. Look at the wars started by the Bushs. There are legitimate short term reasons for secrets. There very few legitimate long term reasons to keep them. We need organizations like Wiki-leaks and journalists to ferret out and expose the illegitimate ones.

But what illegitimate US government secrets has Wikileaks actually exposed?

@Qingu isn’t that the point? So far all of the documents contain information that could be obtained by reading newspapers, or listening to what the actual politicians have to say about the country in which they serve. Yet there is a vast government sponsored movement against the people that released and published these relatively innocuous documents. When a government classifies all of its documents secret or above, how can we guide our representatives? Also how can the government differentiate between what should be kept secret and what should be public information if all documents are deemed secret?

@Ron_C, the government’s rationale—and don’t get me wrong, I’m sure they have other reasons for opposing Wikileaks—is that some of these documents endanger national security or Afghan informants.

I find this a compelling reason, because Amnesty International also raised this objection. And to give an example of how Wikileaks can add nothing to the understanding of the Afghan war while still potentially endangering lives or military operations, here are some random files I found:

“At 010336Z Sep 06 ARTHUR radar system, co-located with E Bty, picked up TB mortar round,5 km north PB Wilson. try to locate exact position. Point of Impact ANA mortar troop. 0829Z, Bty fired 2 rounds HE at 0335Z at TB mortar position, afer the ARTHUR system determined TB mortors were originating from that location. BDA cannot be assessed at this time, but it did supress mortar fire as it stopped.”

There are a LOT of files like this. Now, it doesn’t add anything to our understanding of the conflict, because of course we know that troops are under mortar fire and have gadgets for detecting the source of mortar fire. On the other hand, I didn’t know the exact range and specifications of the gadgets used to detect mortars—perhaps the Taliban didn’t either. Now they do (or now the few literate members of the Taliban with internet access do).

Here is another example, again from a random file, this one from 2008:

“A SQN LD reported while conducting a NFO patrol, 1x interpreter went bathing in the Helmand river and is missing. FF were in a rest position. FF conducted a search for the missing interpreter with ground and air assets. Dive Recce to be conducted on 2 Aug.”

This seems innocuous; their interpreter went missing. Maybe he’s dead, maybe he went AWOL. What if the interpreter is/was found by the Taliban? This report contains the date and the location where he went missing. It wouldn’t be hard for them to put 2 and 2 together.

Again, this file adds nothing to our understanding of the war (of course we use interpreters, of course interpreters have gone missing for whatever reasons). But it also might well endanger the life of an individual named in the report.

(By the way, those files I found just randomly browsing through the leaks I downloaded back when they first were published; the main Wikileaks site is down, but if you have access to one of the mirrors of the files themselves I’d encourage you to take like a half an hour and just browse through some of them. Some versions let you hover over military acronyms for definitions, which is very helpful.)

I completely support the exposure of lies, corruption and other illegal behavior. But the latest Wikileaks coup is unethical to say the least:

“The controversial whistleblower site published the cable late on Sunday, listing potential targets that experts told British daily The Times were a gift for terrorist organisations. The list of critical infrastructure and key resources located abroad detailed hundreds of pipelines, important data cables, and businesses belonging to international industrial and pharmaceutical giants. If destroyed, these sites could damage US interests, the diplomatic communique said.

In Germany such sites included the BASF headquarters in Ludwigshafen, which was described as the world’s largest integrated chemical complex, and Hamburg’s port. Other crucial sites include the northwestern coastal city of Norden and the North Sea island of Sylt, where two important underwater data and communication cables connecting North America and Europe reach land. The list was the result of a February 2009 order from Washington for officials to compile a list of international assets critical for the United States.

The plants of industrial giant Siemens were also listed for essentially irreplaceable production of key chemicals and the production of hydroelectric dam turbines and generators. Other companies included Dräger Safety in the northern German city of Lübeck, critical to gas detection capability, and Junghans Fienwerktechnik in the southern city of Schramberg, critical to the production of mortars. A number of German pharmaceutical companies that produce critical vaccines, medications and medical tests, including insulin and a small pox vaccine, were also included on the list.”

http://www.thelocal.de/national/20101206-31623.html

There are people in Germany who live or work near these sites. And many of them are now very worried or even terrified.

This is psychological warfare. Wikileaks has become an ally of Al-Qaeda. Besides killing people, their goals include spreading fear.

@mattbrowne It could be argued that the US government also has the goal of spreading fear. How else could they justify spending huge sums of taxpayer money to strip away our rights?

@jerv – Well, even if this were so, which I doubt, this doesn’t make the recent leak about terrorist targets any better.

fear fear fear. We cower in fear from a small band of criminals. Why? Everything that is done against someones opinion is spun as danger. If these targets are on a list, I think it should have already been public knowledge, don’t I have a right to make an informed decision regarding where I go. Is it just the priviledged few that gets that honor in the name of national security.

More people have died from car accidents in the US than terrorism over the last decade, by a very large margin. Trillions spent, millions of hours wasted, anyone safe yet? This whole strategy has been an abject failure. We have reacted exactly the way our enemies have wanted. The more we spend to feel safe the more we take our way of life away. Ask yourself, If you don’t feel safe, will you ever? or could you ever?

I certanly wouldn`t classify it as any kind of terrorism. I also don`t think it really served a greater purpose other than to let the people involved and the general public know they are horses asses. Just my opinion but i have been waiting for the damage to be assessed by the USA and the only damage they have admitted to is the damage from embarrassment of again, being horses asses.

Free speech, go for it! Digital terrorism, get used to it.

This wiki-rap seems to have a lot to say about the matter.

@lloydbird so true even if it is in Rap form. I cannot understand why more people aren’t outraged by this blatant attack on free speech.

@Ron_C Because many believe that the US is morally infallible and should not be questioned ever.

@jerv that goes back the the American Exceptional-ism theory from the Bush administration. It is another form of my country right or wrong that lead us into Vietnam and that brought the Shah into power in Iran.

Apparently, it doesn’t matter who we kill or torture as long as everybody understands that the U.S. is above the law. I hate it!